Forum Journal Issue 10: Space/s (Deadline 1 February 2010)

Forum: The University of Edinburgh's Online Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts

Call for Papers - Issue 10 - Space(s)

With the invention of the internet – that infinite cyber space – our world has both radically expanded and contracted. Opened up, as our practice of interacting with others has been drastically changed; but contracted, as this freedom has altered our experience of spatial distance forever. Older technological advances, such as the invention of air travel, initiated this movement by enabling us to traverse and therefore grasp space in new ways. But it is not just our conception of material space that has altered; the impact has also changed our experience of mental space as well. Our world, our cities, our domestic, private, and public spaces have undergone a drastic re-definition; these new spaces have forced a change in our understanding of the nature of space itself.

How do we approach these changes and the questions they raise in film, art, music, literature, theatre, and media? In what ways have our changing relations with space altered our understanding of previous spatial conceptions? What does the future hold for our sense of space in a world composed of so many different kinds of spaces, non-spaces, and gaps in space? These changes have affected not only physical and mental space, but the very idea of space itself – its boundaries, its construction, its manipulation. To speak of space in these terms suggests that it is graspable, controllable, and claimable; how does this conception of space relate to the idea that it is negation itself? What exactly are we talking of when we try to articulate ‘space’?

In order to answer some of these questions, we are seeking submissions that grapple with notions of space. Topics might include, but are not limited to: